BRL-CAD's support for NURBS boundary representation geometry continues to be a primary development focus area so BRL-CAD may faithfully represent external CAD models without having to convert to a polygonal representation. Support for NURBS ray tracing continues to advance steadily with improved wireframes, enhanced surface evaluation, and overall robustness improvements. Enhancements to NURBS wireframes provides a much better visualization of surface contours and ray tracing improvements resolve the majority of previously observed rendering problems.

BRL-CAD's support for NURBS boundary representation geometry continues to be a primary development focus area so BRL-CAD may faithfully represent external CAD models without having to convert to a polygonal representation. Support for NURBS ray tracing continues to advance steadily with improved wireframes, enhanced surface evaluation, and overall robustness improvements. Enhancements to NURBS wireframes provides a much better visualization of surface contours and ray tracing improvements resolve the majority of previously observed rendering problems.

−

Numerous MGED command bugs have been fixed including an output formatting problem with ''nirt''; a problem with ''red'' deleting attributes; garbage output in results from ''idents'', ''solids'', and ''regions''; and much more. By popular request, the ''rt'' command is now capable of outputting directly to the PNG image file format along with support for PPM, BMP, and BW images. A new albeit preliminary Bag of Triangles (BoT) editing interface has been developed for Archer and MGED to consolidate and organize the various BoT processing commands into a unified easy-to-use interface. Also included is the conclusion of a phenomenal effort by Jesica Guidice who meticulously translated approximately 150 pages of MGED tutorial documentation from English to Spanish. The 16 tutorials are now fully converted while work continues on the technical side towards publishing corresponding PDF documents on the BRL-CAD website.

+

Numerous MGED command bugs have been fixed including an output formatting problem with '' 'nirt' ''; a problem with '' 'red' '' deleting attributes; garbage output in results from '' 'idents' '', '' 'solids' '', and '' 'regions' ''; and much more. By popular request, the '' 'rt' '' command is now capable of outputting directly to the PNG image file format along with support for PPM, BMP, and BW images. A new albeit preliminary Bag of Triangles (BoT) editing interface has been developed for Archer and MGED to consolidate and organize the various BoT processing commands into a unified easy-to-use interface. Also included is the conclusion of a phenomenal effort by Jesica Guidice who meticulously translated approximately 150 pages of MGED tutorial documentation from English to Spanish. The 16 tutorials are now fully converted while work continues on the technical side towards publishing corresponding PDF documents on the BRL-CAD website.

−

Other fixes include numerous NMG/BoT robustness improvements supporting geometry conversion and export. In support of this robustness work, a new sophisticated ''conversion.sh'' test script is available that attempts to convert all geometry in specified .g files to NMG and BoT format with results reported in a concise and organized manner. With repeatable metrics and numerous failure cases in hand, work can begin towards systematically addressing common problems that affect geometry conversion and export.

+

Other fixes include numerous NMG/BoT robustness improvements supporting geometry conversion and export. In support of this robustness work, a new sophisticated '' 'conversion.sh' '' test script is available that attempts to convert all geometry in specified .g files to NMG and BoT format with results reported in a concise and organized manner. With repeatable metrics and numerous failure cases in hand, work can begin towards systematically addressing common problems that affect geometry conversion and export.

Revision as of 21:12, 8 December 2010

Welcome to the BRL-CAD community publication portal. This page is dedicated to the preparation and editing of community publications for BRL-CAD.

This is the place to learn what publications are proposed or upcoming, which are actively being worked on, and their individual editorial status. You are welcome and encouraged to help share news about recent events or current activities taking place within the BRL-CAD community.

Note: if you see a comment indicating that a section is FROZEN, any changes you make in that section may go unnoticed. If you find errors in a FROZEN article, contact Sean (brlcad on freenode IRC) who may be able to incorporate changes during final publication.

Contents

Ready for Publication

These are articles ready for publication. Release notes should follow a release and get published within the first week of the month. Other publications should be scheduled one or two weeks later, ideally on the third week of the month.

Final Editorial Review

These should be "complete" articles. The author is done with the content and all that remains is a review of structure, grammar, voice, punctuation, and spelling. Images may be added as well.

Cliff Yapp, 2010DEC8: Release 7.18.0

We are pleased to announce the availability of BRL-CAD 7.18.0. Since our previous public release announcement, there was another 7.16 stabilization release and there have been more than 50 user-visible changes to BRL-CAD. Among those changes include significant development on NURBS support, MGED enhancements, geometry conversion, Windows portability, documentation, and more.

BRL-CAD's support for NURBS boundary representation geometry continues to be a primary development focus area so BRL-CAD may faithfully represent external CAD models without having to convert to a polygonal representation. Support for NURBS ray tracing continues to advance steadily with improved wireframes, enhanced surface evaluation, and overall robustness improvements. Enhancements to NURBS wireframes provides a much better visualization of surface contours and ray tracing improvements resolve the majority of previously observed rendering problems.

Numerous MGED command bugs have been fixed including an output formatting problem with 'nirt' ; a problem with 'red' deleting attributes; garbage output in results from 'idents' , 'solids' , and 'regions' ; and much more. By popular request, the 'rt' command is now capable of outputting directly to the PNG image file format along with support for PPM, BMP, and BW images. A new albeit preliminary Bag of Triangles (BoT) editing interface has been developed for Archer and MGED to consolidate and organize the various BoT processing commands into a unified easy-to-use interface. Also included is the conclusion of a phenomenal effort by Jesica Guidice who meticulously translated approximately 150 pages of MGED tutorial documentation from English to Spanish. The 16 tutorials are now fully converted while work continues on the technical side towards publishing corresponding PDF documents on the BRL-CAD website.

Other fixes include numerous NMG/BoT robustness improvements supporting geometry conversion and export. In support of this robustness work, a new sophisticated 'conversion.sh' test script is available that attempts to convert all geometry in specified .g files to NMG and BoT format with results reported in a concise and organized manner. With repeatable metrics and numerous failure cases in hand, work can begin towards systematically addressing common problems that affect geometry conversion and export.